Thursday, February 2, 2017

Defining fascism and Bonapartism: Leon Trotsky in 1934

The vast practical
importance of a correct theoretical orientation is most strikingly manifestos
in a period of acute social conflict of rapid political shifts, of abrupt
changes in the situation. In such periods, political conceptions and
generalizations are rapidly used up and require either a complete replacement
(which is easier) or their concretization, precision or partial rectification
(which is harder). It is in just such periods that all sorts of transitional,
intermediate situations and combinations arise, as a matter of necessity, which
upset the customary patterns and doubly require a sustained theoretical
attention. In a word, if in the pacific and “organic” period (before the war)
one could still live on the revenue from a few readymade abstractions, in our
time each new event forcefully brings home the most important law of the
dialectic: The truth is always concrete....

....A government
which raises itself above the nation is not, however, suspended in air. The
true axis of the present government passes through the police, the bureaucracy,
the military clique. It is a military-police dictatorship with which we are
confronted, barely concealed with the decorations of parliamentarism. But a
government of the saber as the judge arbiter of the nation – that’s just what
Bonapartism is.

The saber by itself
has no independent program. It is the instrument of “order.” It is summoned to
safeguard what exists. Raising itself politically above the classes,
Bonapartism, like its predecessor Caesarism, for that matter, represents in the
social sense, always and at all epochs, the government of the strongest and
firmest part of the exploiters; consequently, present-day Bonapartism can be
nothing else than the government of finance capital which directs, inspires,
and corrupts the summits of the bureaucracy, the police, the officers’ caste,
and the press.

....The strength of
finance capital does not reside in its ability to establish a government of any
kind and at any time, according to its wish; it does not possess this faculty.
Its strength resides in the fact that every non-proletarian government is
forced to serve finance capital; or better yet, that finance capital possesses
the possibility of substituting for each one of its systems of domination that
decays, another system corresponding better to the changed conditions. However,
the passage from one system to another signifies the political crisis which,
with the concourse of the activity of the revolutionary proletariat may be
transformed into a social danger to the bourgeoisie. The passage of
parliamentary democracy to Bonapartism itself was accompanied in France by an
effervescence of civil war. The perspective of the passage from Bonapartism to
fascism is pregnant with infinitely more formidable disturbances and
consequently also revolutionary possibilities.

....Fascism is a
specific means of mobilizing and organizing the petty bourgeoisie in the social
interests of finance capital. During the democratic regime capital inevitably
attempted to inoculate the workers with confidence in the reformist and
pacifist petty bourgeoisie. The passage to fascism, on the contrary, is
inconceivable without the preceding permeation of the petty bourgeoisie with
hatred of the proletariat. The domination of one and the same superclass,
finance capital, rests in these two systems upon directly opposite relations of
oppressed classes.

....political
mobilization of the petty bourgeoisie against the proletariat, however, is
inconceivable without that social demagogy which means playing with fire for
the big bourgeoisie. The danger to “order” of the unleashed petty-bourgeois
reaction, has just been confirmed by the recent events in Germany. That is why,
while supporting and actively financing reactionary banditry, in the form of
one of its wings, the French bourgeoisie seeks not to push matters to the point
of the political victory of fascism, aiming only at the establishment of a
“strong” power which, in the last analysis, is to discipline the two extreme
camps

....Bonapartism
begins by combining the parliamentary regime with fascism, so triumphant
fascism finds itself forced not only to enter into a bloc with the
Bonapartists, but what is more, to draw closer internally to the Bonapartist
system. The prolonged domination of finance capital by means of reactionary
social demagogy and petty-bourgeois terror is impossible.

....while losing its
social mass base, by resting upon the bureaucratic apparatus and oscillating
between the classes, fascism is regenerated into Bonapartism. Here, too, the
gradual evolution is cut into by violent and sanguinary episodes. Differing
from pre-fascist or preventive Bonapartism (Giolitti, Brüning-Schleicher,
Doumergue, etc.) which reflects the extremely unstable and short-lived
equilibrium between the belligerent camps, Bonapartism of fascist origin
(Mussolini, Hitler, etc.), which grew out of the destruction, the
disillusionment and the demoralization of the two camps of the masses,
distinguishes itself by its much greater stability.

....All history
shows that it is impossible to keep the proletariat enchained with the aid
merely of the police apparatus. It is true that the experience of Italy shows
that the psychological heritage of the enormous catastrophe experienced
maintains itself among the working class much longer than the relationship
between the forces which engendered the catastrophe. But the psychological
inertia of the defeat is but a precarious prop. It can crumble at a single blow
under the impact of a powerful convulsion

1 comment:

You may remember that a few months ago I asked why the SWP did not characterize Trump as a Bonapartist, since he would seem to fit the definition to a "T." Back in the '90s they were very quick to describe Ross Perot, Patrick Buchanan and even Jesse Ventura this way.

I know you're not a member of the SWP, or even an "organized supporter, but since all of a sudden you're posting articles on the subject, I suspect a line change is imminent, and it will now officially define Trump as a Bonapartist. The problem this poses for them is if they admit it now, the whole edifice of their orientation toward the "Trump Movement" for the last year and a half comes crashing down in a heap. What to do?